Dallas, TX, July 24, 2015— Kevin W. Tucker, The Margot B. Perot Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, will be stepping down from his position next month after twelve years of dedicated service to the DMA. Tucker, who has more than twenty years of experience in the field and is a specialist in American decorative arts and design of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has been named the founding director of the forthcoming Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement in St. Petersburg, Florida.
“Kevin has been an exemplary part of our curatorial team, firmly establishing the decorative arts and design program at the DMA as one of the finest of its kind in the country,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, the DMA’s Eugene McDermott Director. “His contributions to the Museum have included overseeing remarkable exhibitions, acquisitions, and scholarly research. While I look forward to having him as a colleague in the field, he will be greatly missed in Dallas. We wish him every success in his future endeavors.”
”It has been an exceptional honor to serve the DMA and our community as curator for the design arts,” Tucker remarked. “I look back with pride at the great accomplishments shared with my Dallas colleagues and forward to the opportunity to establish and lead a new museum wholly dedicated to a further understanding and appreciation of the design arts within its community and the nation.”
Since joining the DMA in June 2003 as the sole curator for the Decorative Arts and Design program at the DMA, Tucker has organized numerous exhibitions including the major traveling exhibition Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement (2010), a major study of one of the seminal figures in early 20th-century design, which was accompanied by a groundbreaking catalogue on the subject. He also served as the DMA project director and co-curator for the nationally touring exhibition Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design (2005), and was as an editor and contributor for its award-winning catalogue. He has also conceived and directed over a dozen other DMA exhibitions and installations including Imperial Taste: Chinese Porcelain for the Western Trade (2005), Ten for Tea (2007), Through the Needle’s Eye: American Quilts from the Permanent Collection of the Dallas Museum of Art (2004), and Modern Opulence in Vienna: The Wittgenstein Vitrine, on view through May 29, 2016; curated the Dallas presentation of The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk (2011); and reinstalled the Museum’s American decorative arts holdings, including the creation of galleries dedicated to 19th-century American silver and 20th-century design.
Tucker has been responsible for a series of major acquisitions for the Museum, including the recent addition of an early 20th-century masterpiece by the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), the solid silver and gem-studded Wittgenstein Vitrine by designer Carl Otto Czeschka that is the subject of a forthcoming book by Tucker to be published by Yale University Press in conjunction with the DMA. His other notable acquisitions include the Huntingdon Wine Cistern, a pair of Louis Comfort Tiffany “undersea” windows, a rare Gustav Stickley linen chest, Viktor Schreckengost’s Jazz Bowl, and a variety of American silver works such as a Viking vase for the 1901 Buffalo Exposition, a Tiffany & Co. Aztec coffee service for William Randolph Hearst, the gem-studded Celestial Centerpiece for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, a silver and opal box designed by Archibald Knox for Liberty & Co., and a silver hot water urn designed by architect Eliel Saarinen. Additionally, he has been responsible for the most significant growth in the DMA’s collections of contemporary design, including his recent acquisition of the Rose-Asenbaum Collection of over 700 works of jewelry dating from the 1960s through the end of the century.
Prior to his work at the DMA, Tucker served as chief curator and deputy director at the Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina. He also served as the Columbia Museum of Art’s curator of decorative arts and associate/assistant curator for decorative arts. In addition to his work in Columbia, Tucker served as curator of decorative arts & Owens-Thomas House at the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia.
Tucker has served on the board of the Curators Committee (CURCOM) and has been involved with various regional and national professional committees, including that of the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC). He holds an MA degree in Applied History/Museum Studies and a BA in History from the University of South Carolina, and was the recipient of a 2007 Winterthur Research Fellowship for his work on Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement.
About the Dallas Museum of Art
Established in 1903, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is among the 10 largest art museums in the country and is distinguished by its commitment to research, innovation, and public engagement. At the heart of the Museum and its programs is its global collection, which encompasses more than 23,000 works and spans 5,000 years of history, representing a full range of world cultures. Located in the nation’s largest arts district, the Museum acts as a catalyst for community creativity, engaging people of all ages and backgrounds with a diverse spectrum of programming, from exhibitions and lectures to concerts, literary events, and dramatic and dance presentations. Since the Museum’s return to free general admission in 2013, the DMA has welcomed more than two million visitors, and enrolled more than 100,000 people in DMA Friends, the nation’s first free museum membership program. For more information, visit DMA.org.
The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Partners and donors, the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
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